Guild Wars 2

I have played guardian, elementalist and thief to 40, 60 and 80 respectively, and with all three underwater combat is much, much harder than land combat:

1. often you can’t see how far away mobs are, which results in you pulling much more than you wanted to;
2. Often, the camera zoomes in too much and you can’t see anything else but your character, resulting in either kiting not working or you suddenly breaking the surface of the water and losing all your abilities;
3. Mobs seem to be more tightly packed underwater than on land, meaning that if you are kiting one soon you’ll have three or more following you (this is closely related to #1);
4. The bug of mobs becoming invulnerable and resetting happens a lot more underwater;
and 5. This is definitely the worst. All of the above things wouldn’t be so bad if you actually did as much or more damage on land than underwater, but underwater damage ist soooo low! For instance, on my elementalist it takes me as long to do an underwater normal mob as it takes me to do a veteran on land! I am currently carrying a yellow trident and a really good breather I bought a level ago; the trident does around 100 damage more than my two daggers; still, my #1 fire skill on land does 3x 115 dmg while my #1 fire skill under water only does 73 dmg (and this only when it hits, which it often doesn’t because of kiting).

I’d like to love underwater combat; I really do. But how can I when it is so much harder than land combat?

In all fairness, you can’t seriously compare the auto attack damage of trident to daggers, because they are quite different (that’s probably like comparing churning earth, dagger earth 5’s burst damage, to staff earth 5).

While I do feel most of the points you stated are valid, some of them aren’t technically bugs (mob density, damage, etc), but rather design choices, and I feel that they are more suggestion-y than bugs.

Also, I’d like to add #6: while underwater, dodging backwards goes in the opposite direction as you would expect (while the camera is facing downward, you dodge downward when you dodge back).

Underwater combat is just fine, in my opinion. You mentioned Elementalists and I’d like to add on that – despite them hitting like a wet noodle underwater at first and having to unlock underwater skills being a pain in the kitten at lv 80 with an Exotic trident you can put massive hurting on an enemy while keeping it almost permanently CC’d.

Switch attunements and try different things. As opposed to ground fighting, Ele’s auto attacks underwater are very subpar. The only one you should use is the Lightning one at melee range. Other than that, it’s a matter of rotating cooldowns in different attunements.

Also, Whirlpool.

Everytime I retry underwater combat again it is exactly the same story. I just did a whole event chain on land alone without problem, but as soon as I tried an event underwater I constantly died. I don’t know anybody who enjoys underwater combat and all of my friends just avoid it whenever possible. Come on, this can’t be intended.

The problem is not underwater combat, its that you are playing an Elementalist. Arenanet doesn’t want you to play this class, you must re-roll Warrior immediately. As soon a you do you’ll notice that underwater combat (and any other aspect of the game) becomes far easier and you will get a lot more enjoyment out of the game.

Forked Lightning is, itself, buggy. So spamming it isn’t always the answer for a wet ele. I’ve found numerous places where the three prongs of lightning consistently completely miss the target even when it’s in or very near melee distance. Bug was reported two months ago with specifics and screenshot, and it’s still there (as of yesterday).

Also I agree with the OP about matters of perspective (though this isn’t a bug nor a complaint). For whatever reason, I often find it difficult to know when I’m actually within melee range to use a spear, and end up miss miss miss miss miss missing the target because it’s a foot higher than me when viewed from the side, despite the mob having no issue at all hitting me at the same angle even though it’s body is also entirely horizontal in the water (that part is sort of a complaint, but unlikely a bug).

Having said that, I really like the way underwater environments look and feel—the combat though, often not so much. ESPECIALLY the stupidity of mobs rushing you (even in entirely open water) attacking until you take them to <50% or so, then going invul while blithely swimming away to heal 100%, then rushing back again to repeat the process. Either you’re reachable or you’re not; that determination shouldn’t be made only when the mob is almost dead. Tiresome and frankly entirely unacceptable from a high-end game like this.

Elementalist’s damage with underwater weapons is underwhelming. It needs to be buffed significantly in my opinion. Also, I absolutely agree with #2, camera can get really wonky when my character swims near the surface. Just give camera the option to go above the surface, like in a certain very popular MMO.

I agree with OP… underwater combat is bugged.
This is not just a class subject.
Mobs resetting in the middle of combat even when not moving is so annoying.

It’s the “invulnerable” aspect of underwater combat that’s worst—————-That’s NOT something you find on land and it’s VERY difficult to deal with————-especially since THEY (the foes) can “Swim away faster than you” so THEY can be invulnerable, but YOU can’t!! (That’s NOT a game——-that’s only a question of “how fast can you die??”)

undouble.1472:

It’s the “invulnerable” aspect of underwater combat that’s worst—————-That’s NOT something you find on land and it’s VERY difficult to deal with————-especially since THEY (the foes) can “Swim away faster than you” so THEY can be invulnerable, but YOU can’t!! (That’s NOT a game——-that’s only a question of “how fast can you die??”)

I’ve had Elementalists fleeing from my ranger underwater at about 75 knots. Explain that please.

The INVULNERABLE bug for any underwater combat is a known problem and it was written in this forum some time ago. Even if you are at spawn point of the mob, he will often turn his back, reheal and turn around to attack you again, while you were in combat all the time.

The underwater attacks seem to be less effective, but with the elementalist it depends on the attunement choosen.